★★★★★
was the definitive 'pop metal' album and a truly iconic cultural signifier of the Eighties. It sold about twenty billion copies and remains, should you wish to blow the dust off your vinyl, a consistently brilliant, joyous, absolutely awful record. What chanced upon with that record back in '86 was something so purely fun and anthemic that it crossed the boundaries of rock and chart music, seemingly critic-proof, taking on a life of its own and propelling the Jove into stadia across the world...
- www.drownedinsound.com
2014-06-30
★★★★★
March 12, 2013
The 12th Bon Jovi album extends the Springsteen liberalism in JBJ's stadium-rattling Jersey cheese into full-on "social commentary" (his term). "What About Now" and "I'm With You" are rousingly vague got-your-back anthems...
- www.rollingstone.com
2013-04-01
★★★★★
When I was 12 and first discovering rock music there was nothing wrong with liking Bon Jovi. I got into Nirvana just the the right side of Kurt Cobain's suicide, I loved Guns N' Roses, I had a Megadeth t-shirt and the cover of Cannibal Corpse's Eaten Back To Life as an A2 poster, despite never hearing a note of the album. It was all rock music, it all fundamentally represented the same thing to me...
- drownedinsound.com
2013-04-01
★★★★★
With the Nashville curveball of 2007's Lost Highway increasingly looking like a one-off, Bon Jovi's 12th studio album finds them on familiar ground, arena-pleasing blue-collar anthems of everyday struggle sitting alongside overblown power ballads. Album highlight What's Left of Me is an artfully constructed love letter to the recent past, taking in the decline of newspapers, the US economy and - slightly jarringly - punk venue CBGB...
- www.guardian.co.uk
2013-04-01
★★★★★
The title track of Bon Jovi's 12th studio album poses a question: "Who stands for the restless and the lonely, for the desperate and the hungry?" Well, Bon Jovi stands for them, of course, so the band have reached out with the sort of empowering platitudes and riffage that will give fans on this summer's stadium tour something to punch the air about. And yet ... the song's evident sincerity cuts through the bluster and wins the day, as do several others on the album...
- www.guardian.co.uk
2013-04-01
★★★★★
Sound: Dear friends and commercial partners, The day is finally here! Bon Jovi are back! We've built our brand all over the globe over the past 30 years and in that time we've delivered nothing but the finest solutions and most efficient service to our clients. This year the living legends return with "What About Now", 12 tracks of booming stadium rock to suit any need. It doesn't matter what you're advertising...
- www.ultimate-guitar.com
2014-07-08
★★★★★
Sound: Once again, Richie Sambora excellently demonstrates his abilities as a lead guitarist. Yeah, some of the solos really aren't all that complicated, but hey, they're still solos, and they're still cool. All the guitar riffs sound awesome too. // 10 Lyrics and Singing: The lyrics on this album aren't as sappy as earlier Bon Jovi studio offerings. Therefore, I liked them a lot better. Jon Bon Jovi and the guys are excellent singers. The vocals and lyrics fit in just fine with the music...
- www.ultimate-guitar.com
2012-04-12
★★★★★
Sound: Bon Jovi's 8th studio album, "Bounce" punched through after the 9/11 attacks and the result? A heavier back to basics Bon Jovi. From the opening track "Undivided", came Jon's growling vocals, a bombast of Richie's layered guitars, David's sampling and various sounds, Tico's booming drums and Hugh's thumping bass lines. It only begins there, afterwards the first single "Everyday" provides a sampling of Richie's talkbox via Pro Tools and Luke Ebbin's production...
- www.ultimate-guitar.com
2012-04-12
★★★★★
Sound: If you've never heard Bon Jovi before, but only know them by what other people say, then this album would simply blow you away. It is recorded live from various concerts and is by far their heaviest album. If you hadn't heard anything they had recorded you would probably laugh at those who call them pop/rock because there's simply nothing pop about this album. Their version of Neil Young's "Rockin' In The Free World" is astonishingly heavy and sounds amazing on gass mark 9...
- www.ultimate-guitar.com
2012-04-12